{"id":1365,"date":"2016-04-04T14:13:53","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T14:13:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbwood.com\/dir\/?p=1365"},"modified":"2016-04-04T14:13:53","modified_gmt":"2016-04-04T14:13:53","slug":"just-for-the-record-fuckcancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rbwood.com\/dir\/just-for-the-record-fuckcancer\/","title":{"rendered":"Just for the record, #fuckcancer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Cancer<\/a>
Cancer Sucks. Here are two kissing bunnies to make up for it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s been an exhausting few months so let me try and bring all you folks up to speed.<\/p>\n

After the pulmonary embolism and mini-strokes back in November, I\u2019ve been slowly recovering. The brain is a marvelous tool (go ahead, make the joke) and I have been relearning many things as well as reconnecting neurons damaged by the little brain-bastards.<\/p>\n

One of the things that happened during that whole emergency room\/ICU scene was I had a PET scan for possible cancer (originally the doctors thought I had a mass in my right lung which they were sure was cancer and were equally sure that\u2019s what had caused all my problems).<\/p>\n

They were wrong. The \u201cmass\u201d was just a blood clot that was reabsorbed by the body.<\/p>\n

However, my thyroid lit up during the scan.<\/p>\n

Since this was the least of my problems at the time, this little factoid was put on the shelf temporarily.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d made enough progress to have the anomaly finally looked at\u2014turned out to be a 1.7 cm carcinoma embedded in the thyroid. I spoke to an endocrine expert and a thyroid surgeon and we all agreed that the mass couldn\u2019t just be removed\u2014the entire thyroid should come out to be on the safe side.<\/p>\n

This past Friday, I had that done. Too bad I couldn\u2019t collect frequent flyer miles for my hospital stays.<\/p>\n

Although I\u2019ll be on a synthetic thyroid hormone the rest of my life, the good news is it looks<\/em> like they got everything\u2026AND the lymph nodes in the area were clear.<\/p>\n

The support I\u2019ve gotten from everyone has been overwhelming. From kind words, notes, and cards from friends and family (not to mention a small GoFundMe campaign that was successful in every way\u2014thank you all again) \u2014to the most amazing care I\u2019ve received by the dozen or so doctors working my case.<\/p>\n

So why am I telling you all this? Because, honestly, I feel amazingly blessed. The love of an amazing woman (yes, wife\u2026.that\u2019s YOU), the prayers, the notes of support, the comedy. They all added (and continue to add) to my recovery.<\/p>\n

I survived. I expect to thrive. After all, it took four separate cancers to take my dad down a few weeks ago and he was nearly 90. I think he would be disappointed if I checked out early.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m recovering. I have things to do. Life has complete new meaning for me\u2014probably the meaning it should have had all a long.<\/p>\n

Better late than never.<\/p>\n

Love to you all,<\/p>\n

RB<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been an exhausting few months so let me try and bring all you folks up to speed. After the pulmonary embolism and mini-strokes back in November, I\u2019ve been slowly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rbwood.com\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rbwood.com\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rbwood.com\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rbwood.com\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rbwood.com\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rbwood.com\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1367,"href":"https:\/\/rbwood.com\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365\/revisions\/1367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rbwood.com\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rbwood.com\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rbwood.com\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rbwood.com\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}